Why can’t I sleep?

[reigun]

the i n s o m n i a meme
It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?


i n s t r u c t i o n s
• Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!


o p t i o n s

01 • FEAR.

Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.

02 • HUNGER.

Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.

03 • PAIN.

Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.

04 • SOLITUDE.

For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...

05 • DISCOMFORT.

Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.

06 • PENSIVE.

Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?

07 • SADNESS.

Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.

08 • ANGER.

You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.

09 • RESTLESS.

You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.

10 • WILDCARD.

Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario.

Comments

Benedict Fox | The Last Case of Benedict Fox | OTA

[companionsgrasp]

[littlesunshine]

[ ooc: how do you feel about an anti-pope with a demonic bloodline who is mostly very sweet and quirky and yeah also a rockstar? weird canon is weird but i see you have already met his mother (sister imperator). c: ]

[companionsgrasp]

[yes! i am good with them meeting this quirky fellow! before i got to the end of your tag i was already wondering if this was related to sister imperator lol they have a very distinctive look and i was googling them the other day. have at them!]

[littlesunshine]

ooc: let me know if you want me to edit anything to make it easier to reply! 8)

[ Copia woke a bit after midnight to screaming noises, which in itself was not cause for alarm or particularly noteworthy in their Ministry, housed inside a cursed Mausoleum. It was the otherworldly, vibrating static of the screaming, no doubt coming from their Hell Portal somehow opening up again (or being left open) that roused him from bed. Really? Again?

He gathered some cardinals and sisters of sin to close it again, and by the time their ritual was finished, he had a headache from listening to their subservient demons and ghouls (essentially indentured servants bound by contracts of various lengths) wailing, for lack of a better adjective, to the portal's distress for hours.

By the time he had removed his ritual attire and made his way back into a comfy maroon sweatsuit and laid back in bed, all he could do was stare at his ceiling and overthink the future. There was a slowly growing feeling of dread, of time running out, that he absolutely could not shake, despite Sister Imperator's reassurances. She had the sight, and most the power in their Ministry, but she was also biased, and he realized that her ability to see his future clearly might actually be her weakness. This was not comforting in the slightest.

Eventually he gave up, slipped on shoes, and rode his tricycle through the Mausoleum - yes, he, a fifty-ish year old man with a childish spirit loved to cruise around the ministry smashing into things on a tricycle - and out to do laps around the outer perimeter of the Ministry's cast iron fencing until his body was so tired he could pass out as soon as he got back inside. Or outside. He didn't care at this point. He was simply tired of thinking thoughts and worrying about his future and his fate. ]

[companionsgrasp]

[Cemeteries and mausoleums were usually a place to avoid for Benedict. The old dead didn't linger in the shadows but often enough the newly deceased still held some sway over Limbo so that their memories hung coyly in the air. His Companion knew better than to bring them to his attention unwanted but sometimes things, images or voices, slipped through and Benedict found himself immersed in a memory not his own before he realized it.

It was worse when he had to go searching on purpose. A moved body was always a more tumultuous dive for Benedict whenever he had to enter Limbo through one. The freshly buried were no exception. They were worse than even a slightly shifted decedent still cooling close to their place of death. The change in scenery, the blatant difference of where the person died versus where they currently laid in reality often caused the shifting, reflective nature of Limbo to distort and twist even further than it already did naturally. The ravenous denizens didn't seem to appreciate it either, just making their volatile nature even more aggressive in Benedict's opinion.

Benedict was unfamiliar with this particular place but the building was exceptionally vivid and powerful in its twisted state within Limbo. He hoped to be done quickly--he wasn't in for much luck. As usual. However, it didn't matter. What pertained to this scene was that he got in, and much much later he got out. The darkness of night didn't really make much of a difference to Benedict as he stumbled out of a portal from Limbo and fell to his knees on the ground near the fence surrounding the mausoleum. The portal's opening didn't last long to the normal human's sight--a flash of light, there and gone again in an instant. To a psychic, it lingered a little longer--a vision into another world, distorted and twisted, magical and terrifying. Until it, too, slowly faded away. Benedict didn't plan on going back in anytime soon. No reason to keep the portal alive.

He looked up after a moment spent catching his breath and--was that a full grown man riding a child's tricycle? He blinked. The image didn't vanish.

"It's not an illusion of the Void, Benedict." He heard his Companion's wispy voice float through his mind as he blinked again. "Only half madness and half sanity vying for a singular mind driven to the brink of precipice. Desiring mere unconsciousness when too many doubts prod the mind."

So, someone suffering from insomnia. That still didn't explain the tricycle. Benedict merely stared as it drew closer to where he still knelt upon the ground, portal to Limbo fading behind him, and he realized he really didn't care in that moment. It was less insane than the creatures he had just left behind. He took his time to stand slowly and dust himself off.]

[littlesunshine]

ooc: oh right and as an aside, we pretend the masks are their actual face. don't ask, lol. i don't make the rules here.

[ Copia had powers, but was still learning, their depths being mostly dampened, warded, or dormant. He did inherit a sort of psychic knowing from his mother, Sister Imperator, occult witch and Prime Mover, among other things. But his was more sensing, reading between the lines, beyond that of someone simply very intuitive or an typical human "Empath". He wouldn't be able to explain it if you asked him or really know how to focus it.

You would think at his age he would have, previously, exalted such inheritance and focused on little else, but again - there were things warding what he could do and reasons to delay his focus and mastery and attention on this side of himself. Plus, in truth, most of the time he was either busy working or up to childish shenanigans.

At this point, as the figurehead of their church, and no longer a ranking servant to some other superior, he had too much time on his hands. He could use that productively, but Copia also felt the need and was advised to remain in or near the Ministry. It was only recently that he felt increasingly suffocated by this restriction and had begun to question why. But, that was an argument for a later date, because the clergy's band would be touring again soon - internationally! - and he, if being honest, lived for that, even if when their tours were over, he wanted to hibernate for an entire year straight. Anything beat boredom and time alone with Thoughts. Meanwhile, he did everything he could to keep himself distracted or overstimulated enough to not deal with such Thoughts.

It wasn't as much that he saw anything particular, but a sharp sense that suggested a disturbance in the Force nearby, but it didn't last long. He knew Imperator would probably roll her eyes at him thinking of very serious Occult Happenings through Star Wars references, but he was a movie aficionado a bit (a lot, truthfully) of a nerd, on top of the rest of his quirks and distinctions of character. Copia thought of it as being multi-faceted and well rounded.

Sensing it before him and very curious, he continued moving in the direction he had felt said disturbance before halting his tricycle when he noticed a young man stand and dust himself off. His left brow, above the bright nearly white eye quirked and the other, darker, stared with a sort of quizzical suspicion. ]

Eh... Hello? Sort of a strange time to be crawling around in the dirt.

[ As if he could talk. ]

[companionsgrasp]

[Some greeting. Not that he expected much. But he felt called out when he was hardly 'crawling around in the dirt' and there was ample reason for the comment to be hypocritical especially with regards to the strange time and stranger still goings-on.

Benedict gave the queer old man the flattest of looks.]

Sort of a strange time to be peddling on a tricycle.

[He deadpanned back.]

[littlesunshine]

[ Copia stared blankly for a moment before giving an airy sort of chuckle. ] Eheheh. True, true. I live here, and haven't been sleeping well.

[ He glanced up at the nearly full moon, back at the stranger, and realized that as weird as it was for a stranger to be lurking outside the Ministry walls, it was generally unwise for him to be risking exposure like this. But there were never ghouls far off.

Theirs was a mostly nocturnal group, made of human and inhuman things, used to protecting the grounds from all manner of those who wished them harm. ]

I didn't mean offense. There are some really great worms out front. We keep it...well fertilized.

[ A pause, and a slight tilt of his head. ] Are you lost?

[companionsgrasp]

[Benedict gave pause at the information, providing the stranger with a slow blink at the mention of worms, and then a few quick blinks in succession at the 'well fertilized' comment. Yeah, that was a bad joke. Or a horrible not-joke.

He didn't ask for clarification. He didn't want to know.

As for the question though, Benedict glanced around at his surroundings as if to confirm where he was, eyes lingering briefly on the mausoleum in the distance before returning to rest on the stranger.]

...you could say that I'm not entirely knowledgeable of the area.

[Or why there was an old man out here with a tricycle riding around in such an ill-repudiated place.]